three days ago would have signaled my 12th anniversary of moving to NYC. today i found this draft from September 16th, 2012 (written just a month shy of my 9th anniversary of moving to NYC). in a month, i will be back in NYC, briefly, after having expanded out into the world and living in all kinds of places and spaces.

in celebration of all these anniversaries, of a great love and struggle with numbers and time, and of breaking down the very notion of time itself, herein contains the post. it comes from the future, about the past, and, i don’t know about you, but somehow all this time travel puts me right here in the present.

coming back to New York is difficult. i have been here a day and a half and already, i am overwhelmed with meetings, work, emails, rehearsals, and more. it comes down to this obsession with time. how can i find enough time in the day to do all these things and do yoga, Suzuki, clean my apartment, learn Japanese, read, fix my broken shower, play the ukulele, and take care of my cats and all of the others in my life: my “otters”? i start to hate New York City because she is not like Bali or my parents’ house or anywhere else.

today is a new day—a more musical one! the birds are singing alongside the hip hop blasting down my block in Brooklyn.

i woke up at 4:30am and despite some initial annoyance, i decided to channel that energy into a more creative one. i already did some freewriting, logged my weirdo dreams from last night, responded to emails, mused about future travels, cleaned the bathroom (after ensuring that the cats used the toilet properly), wrote a new response piece blog post, and all before 8:45am.

i have been so blessed to be able to, in ten days, see the sun set over the beaches of Canggu and watch it rise again over the mountaintops of Mount Batukaru. to hear the sounds of the chickens crowing, the insects fluttering, motos in the distance, something diving into tree branches…what is that? a giant bug? no, it’s my first bird! could that really be the first bird that i’ve seen here at Bali Mountain Retreat (and all while sitting in what is called The Bird’s Nest???) it sang a little song. i stopped myself from killing a mosquito. a single tear fell from my right eye.